


swallowed in the sea

by wafflelashton



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cheating, First Meetings, Fluff and Angst, Lashton - Freeform, M/M, Sexual Content, Sexuality Crisis, Slow Burn, Summer Vacation, ashton is charming as hell, but also petty, it's great, slight age gap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-06 08:59:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13407843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflelashton/pseuds/wafflelashton
Summary: during a summer spent in an old blue beach house, luke meets a grad student next door who teaches him what it means to feel alive.





	1. you cut me down a tree

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from the song swallowed in the sea by coldplay. it’s beautiful and you should definitely listen to it if you haven’t!! it suits the story perfectly.
> 
> also, disclaimer: luke has a girlfriend in this story. i am not such a poor writer that my only plot device is to make her annoying and awful and make luke hate her. so brace yourself for the juicy conflict that comes from luke being genuinely in love with a girl and a guy at the same time.

A Mazda Miata is a woman’s car.

I’m not sexist. I’m not. I know people always say that if you have to _say_ you’re not sexist, then you’re probably sexist, but what the fuck does that even mean? If I look at you and say, “I am not an elephant,” are you going to look at me and think, well, that’s exactly what an elephant in disguise would _want_ me to think. The answer is, no, you’re not. Why? Because that’s just stupid, and not everything needs to be called into question and analyzed all the time. I am not sexist for calling a spade a spade. I have never seen a man drive a Mazda Miata, and that is simply a fact.

“I’m not saying it’s a bad car! If anything, you’re being sexist towards yourself for assuming that that’s what I mean.”

Amy simply scoffs at me, not taking her eyes off the road for even a second to acknowledge me. “If you didn’t mean it negatively, why did you even point it out in the first place?”

“I was making an observation!” I exclaim. “You know, trying to start some kind of conversation to disrupt the ice cold silence you’ve been giving me since Bookham!”

She scoffs.

“Well I don’t know why you have to be such a dick all the time!”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about!” I exclaim. “I love your little Miata, Dear. All I’m saying is that I’ve never seen one not being driven by a woman! I’m not trying to insinuate anything negative about women! I love women! They’re amazing!”

She purses her lips, tightening her already white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. “You are so full of shit, Luke Hemmings.”

I release a sigh to let her know I’m done arguing. Sure, maybe I overdid it with the loving women part, but is this really what my life has come to? I can’t even enjoy a nice beach trip with my girlfriend without it turning into a fight. I mean, why does she feel the need to do this to me? Why does she have to nitpick everything I say to oblivion just to try and twist me into this horrible person? Is that what she wants? To uncover this unbearable, dickhead side of me just so she’ll have a reason to dump me? It’s fucking exhausting. I swear being in a relationship is 95% arguing about stuff you never imagined yourself giving a shit about.

As she flies down the interstate with the top down, her long blonde waves fly behind her in the wind. When she starts to aggressively push 75, I begin to fear for my life a bit, but I refrain from saying so, as you do in relationships. In honesty, I kind of like bickering with her. She’s beautiful when she’s angry.

I turn back to face the road when she pretends not to notice me staring at her, and I watch as a small slice of the ocean slowly appears on the horizon. This feeling creeps up on my shoulders than can only be described as a sense of nostalgia for a life I never even lived: one where I grew up here, learned to surf before I could walk, fell in love with a sweet, adventurous girl who lived next-door, spent days and nights laying in the sand and philosophizing about what little life we had lived. I ache for this life. It’s like my soul was born into the wrong body, and yet the girl in the car next to me hasn’t the slightest clue.

She doesn’t speak to me again. Some pop nonsense plays through the radio but gets lost in the gusts behind us. In this moment, I can’t help but wish the wind would take me, too.

 

 

When we finally arrive at the house, it doesn't quite live up to the pictures on the website: the driveway is a long, dirt trail worn through the grass, and at the end is a fair-sized house partially shielded from view by a scattering of pine trees. The powder-blue paint is peeling in some places and a few shingles have been knocked loose on the roof, likely from wind damage, and even from the back of the house, I can see where the rising tide has worn away at the paint and left bleach-like wear spots around the foundation.

Amy doesn't mention it, but I can tell she notices it, too.

I grab our bags out of the trunk, wheeling my wobbly suitcase behind me. I've had the same suitcase since I moved out of my parents' house. I lost the wheel at the airport four year ago, somewhere between security and boarding, and I've always been too lazy to fix it and too cheap to buy a new one. The rocky driveway sends it teetering back and forth, making my job that much harder.

The inside of the house is nicer than the outside, at least: the hardwood flooring shows no signs of water damage like the outside might have you believe, the furnishing is fairly modern, a large, glass chandelier hanging over the living room. I can tell already that this beautiful leather couch in this beautiful living room is where I'll be spending most of my trip. Honestly, the high ceilings alone are enough to make me forget about the peeling, sodden facade.

I drop our luggage on a brown chaise lounge next to the fireplace and turn to my girlfriend.

"Well, it's not so bad, right?"

I can tell we're not exactly on the same page as she leans against the island in the kitchen, arms crossed over her chest. God, I hope she doesn't turn this into something. She always finds a way to make a big deal out of the smallest things, and I understand that it’s annoying, but we’re staying in a beach house in Sydney for the next three months, so does it really matter?

"It doesn't look like the pictures."

I sigh. Here we go.

"Well, the outside could use a bit of work, but the inside looks just like the pictures. Maybe even better," I reply, hoping she’ll see reason and let it go.

Her glare doesn’t falter.

"Well, with the amount of money we've put down already, you'd think we could at least expect it to look like the pictures."

I can't help but sigh again.

I cross the room, grabbing her loosely by the shoulders. Dark blue circles are starting to form underneath her eyes after driving the whole second half of the trip. The whites of her eyes are red from exhaustion, her posture slumped, arms dangling tiredly at her side. I can't be mad at her. She's obviously burned out, and to drive for six hours just to find out you've been (at least partially) misled is just frustrating.

"So, the house looks a bit older than the pictures. It just adds character," I offer gently. "Besides, we'll hardly be spending any time here, right? The next three months we'll just be out there, riding the waves, feeling the hot sand between our toes, risking melanoma from all the rays we'll be soaking up. The time of our lives," I joke. She doesn't look quite convinced, but she chuckles softly at the prospect of skin cancer, so I know my beautiful, warped Amiah is still presiding somewhere beneath the surface, which proves to be a glimmer of hope. I wrap my arms around her and hug her to me tightly, resting my chin on top of her head. When I feel her small hands at my back, I sigh a soft breath of relief, knowing that, at least for now, I've managed to calm her down. "Let's just go find the bedroom and take a nap, okay? We'll feel much better after we've rested."

 

 

After arriving at the house at six, we've managed to get about three hours of sleep in before being awoken by a raucous coming from outside the house.

Obviously we have neighbors, as it's the beginning of summer and we're staying on a decently popular beach, but I hadn't noticed but one car in the driveway at the house directly next-door when we got here, so the noise now coming from across the way is absurd. Music with heavy bass is pounding so heavily in the house that it's rattling our own windows, vibrating the walls, the floors, the bed. It was enough to wake Amy up, who is the heaviest sleeper I know, and once she's awake, I know I won't be getting back to sleep any time soon.

So, I do what boyfriends are expected to do, which is man up and handle it. I'm not some square. I've just graduated university, for God's sake, so I've been to my fair share of parties, and even when I wouldn't go, I was never that grandpa who would do whatever it takes to shut the noise down. I understand that parties are just a way to let loose and have fun, and that music that loud just feels right when you're rolling, but today has been very tense, and all I want is to rest, and for my poor girlfriend to be able to get a good night's sleep, too.

I pull on the black joggers I wore here and decide that being on the beach gives me a free pass to be both barefoot and shirtless, even if it is 9 o'clock at night, so I head outside half naked and totally shameless. Hopefully they take that as me being a totally chill, relaxed guy, and they'll understand and everything will be fine. I know that's unlikely, because young people are kind of dickheads for fun like that, but I hope, anyway.

I climb the steps to their porch, which is definitely nicer than ours, but I'll try to spare Amy that detail when I go back. I can feel the bass pulsing through me so aggressively that I can't tell if my heart's palpating or not. It definitely feels like it. Could loud bass like this give me a heart attack? I'm not in the typical demographic for a heart attack, I know, but couldn't it hypothetically mess up the beat of my heart, kill me, and leave Amy to deal with these people on their own? That would be really shitty of me, so I try not to think about it.

I pound on the door as hard as I can to make sure I'm heard over the music, though I still knock a couple of times just to be sure. I can see figures moving inside through the frosted glass of the door, but it takes a moment for somebody to actually answer it. When the door swings open, I realize that the music is even louder than it feels standing on the porch. I don't know how they're not deaf.

Holding the door is a younger guy, roughly my age. He has tan skin and hair the color of honey, short on the sides and curly on top, combed back the slightest bit. He doesn't look particularly mean, but his amber eyes burrow into me with a sort of expectancy, as if he doesn't really have the time to wait around for me to speak up, but he's _just_ courteous enough not to say anything. He's roughly my height, but the door is a step up into the house, so he looms over me a bit. His features resemble those of a marble Renaissance sculpture, and I don't say that for the sake of flattery; he looks so above me that even if he treated me like shit, I'd probably let him. Maybe that's a testament to my character, maybe it's a testament to his attractiveness. I wouldn't know either way.

He grasps a bottle of Jameson in his left hand, his right resting casually on the door. He has on a black shirt, black pants, Gucci loafers, and a leopard-print coat. He is so intimidating in such an unconventional way that it's somehow worse. I came over here to defend my girlfriend but instead I'm just standing here, half-naked on this guy's porch, staring at him like an idiot because I don't even know what words I'm looking for, let alone where in my stupid, thick skull I might find them.

He stares at me as if he can see right through me, directly into my soul.

"Can I help you, mate?" he finally asks. His voice is much less intimidating, even as he’s forced to yell over the music, but he's still mostly frowning at me, which is unnerving. I mean, I wouldn't be particularly welcoming to me, if I were him, either, but that doesn't mean I can't wish that weren't the case.

"Um, hey," I say back, as loudly as my spineless self can muster. That's a good start. At least I've gotten some words out. "Uh, I'm Luke. I'm renting the beach house next-door with my girlfriend for the summer, and I hate to be that asshole, but we drove six hours out here, and we're just trying to get a little sleep, because we're exhausted, but your music literally shook us awake," I explain. He just keeps staring at me, like he doesn't understand what I'm trying to say to him. "So, like, I didn't know if there was any way you might be able to turn the music down? Just a bit?"

He looks me up and down like he's sizing me up, deciding if he could take me or not, but it makes me feel like a stranger in my own skin, and very suddenly aware of my nakedness. He looks me in the eyes for a moment, kind of blankly, and it rattles me, how completely unafraid of eye contact he is. I mean, I'm not afraid of eye contact, but it's a really personal thing—looking each other in the eyes is like saying, hey, I am very aware of your presence right now, in fact, it's the only thing I can acknowledge at the moment, because you're consuming my strongest sense and also I'm very aware of the fact that we gauge emotions and reactions primarily through eye contact so basically I'm in your head and you're in mind and it's kind of intense. But he doesn't seem to feel that way. Eye contact with him is somehow equal parts personal and impersonal, which completely throws me off.

He runs a hand through his curls, tousling them a bit. It feels like hours before he replies.

"Yeah, I hear you, dude," he says. "I mean, there's probably, like, 150 people in here right now, so turning down the music's not really an option. But you and your girlfriend and welcome to come join the party!"

I can tell he's not dumb. He sure looks it, and he kind of sounds it, but I can tell just by the way he looked at me and sized me up that he thinks on another plane that he just may not be quick to cop to, so why's he acting like this? No, I don't want to go to his fucking party. I want to go to sleep, like I just said.

"Yeah, that's real kind of you, mate," I say gently, trying not to add fuel to the fire that’s only burning on one side. "But I was thinking about just getting a good night's sleep and starting the party tomorrow."

He gives me that same blank stare as before, as if he's not even listening to me.

"You staying in the old blue house?" he asks. Yeah. Definitely not listening.

I nod.

"Nice," he says. "I stayed in that house a few times as a kid. Lot of character."

For some reason, this distracts me enough to make me laugh. "Try telling my girlfriend that," I say. "I'm pretty sure she hates it, which I'll be hearing about for the next three months."

He laughs, and then does that thing where he's staring into my soul again. "So, six hours out here, huh?" he asks, changing the subject again. "Where you drive from?"

"Albury.”

He snorts. "Whatcha doing all the way out there?"

"Visiting my parents," I say. "We just graduated from USyd, went to visit my parents and then came back out here for the summer. Gonna stay out here, I'm sure."

He smiles this dry, knowing smile. "Yeah, I lived in Albury for a year when I was 23. Fucking god-awful place to live, isn't it?"

I can't help but laugh and nod in agreement, even if he's managed to drive this conversation light years away from where it started. He's charming, in his own way. I'll give him that much. But he talks about being 23 like it was ages ago—how old is he? He doesn't look any older than me.

"You from around here?"

"Yeah," he says. "Grew up in Sydney. Went to USyd for undergrad, and now I'm in my last year of postgrad at UTS."

God, that makes him, what, 26? 27? There's no way he's that old. He's standing here in a leopard-print coat with over a hundred fucked-up people partying in his house behind him. Grad students don't do that kind of stuff. Do they?

"You're a grad student?" I can't contain myself. I could probably pass for older than this guy, and that's saying something. "What are you studying?"

I don't realize the conversation's growing interesting until he steps down onto the porch and closes the door behind him, as if he's suddenly intrigued enough to commit to speaking with me. I didn't mean for this to turn into something; I just wanted the guy to turn his music down. My ears start to ring a bit once he closes the door, barricading us from the music.

"I got my Bachelor's in Design in Architecture and now I'm getting my Master's in Architecture. Turns out they won't let you be an architect without a Master's, so, here I am," he chuckles, motioning to our surroundings. I'd hardly consider this a failure. The dude's partying in a 300 thousand dollar beach house—it could definitely be worse.

"Why architecture?"

He opens his mouth to speak, but cuts himself off with a small laugh. He casts his eyes down toward the ground, shaking his head, as if recalling an inside joke that he's not sure he wants to explain, but for some odd reason I want him to. I have never met someone who could wear a leopard-print coat and not look like a fool, but he pulls it off, like he manages to pull everything off. The guy may be kind of an ass, refusing to turn his music down, but he sure is fucking suave, managing to catch me off guard and spin the topic of conversation onto something else so effortlessly.

"When I was a thirteen," he begins, with that same knowing grin, "I was having a shit day at school, so I took off. I took the train downtown and wandered around by myself for a few hours and ended up at the Opera House." He peels his eyes off the ground, but doesn't look at me. Instead he crosses the porch and leans on the railing, Jameson bottle in hand, and stares out at the open water. I feel inclined to follow him, so I do, staring at him instead of the water. "And I had only ever seen it once, had never been inside. So I snuck into a show. It was a cabaret. I was completely mesmerized."

I'd never seen a cabaret, but from what I understand, it's not the kind of show you take a thirteen-year-old to. Besides, this sounds more like the story of how he realized he was destined for theater. Or maybe just the story of his sexual awakening.

"Have you been in the Opera House?" he asks, turning to look me in the eyes. The look in his eyes is totally unguarded: different from the other bone-chilling stares he’d given me.

I nod. Only once, but I do remember it being very pretty inside.

"Well, I couldn't have cared less about the cabaret. All the lights, the rows and rows of seats centered around the main stage, the way the acoustics in the room carried their voices to every nook and cranny in there, how the ceiling was so high it gave me vertigo just looking up. I always thought the white sails were beautiful, but God, you take one step inside and it's just this whole other experience."

It's funny, really, because I knew that the Opera House was an architectural icon, and I agreed that it was pretty, but he describes it as if stepping inside was a genuine spiritual moment for him. As if his entire life had been leading up to that moment, and it was silly, because I couldn't imagine feeling that way about a building, but then, it wasn't silly, at the same time, because it made me truly understand the symbolic interaction between man and everyday things. This place that I had been to once and shrugged off was an overarching game-changer for this stranger. It's just funny how that happens. How things are just things until suddenly they're not.

"Anyway, that memory is what made me decide to go into architecture all those years later," he says, standing up straight from where he was leaning on the railing. His tone is suddenly very casual again, as if he hadn't just bared a piece of his soul to a guy he just met on his front porch at nine o'clock at night, and it's kind of harsh, in a weird way.

I can't think to do anything but nod at what he says, because suddenly I'm kind of annoyed. Did he really just spin that whole story just to distract me from why I came over here in the first place? Is he really such a manipulative asshole that he's willing to spill some touching story, real or not, just to make me forget about the fact that he woke me and my girlfriend up out of a dead sleep? And was I really letting him do it? Was it actually working on me? God, am I really so spineless that I'll let him do that to me?

As he turns around to head back inside, I open my mouth to bite back at him, let him know I haven't forgotten what I came over here for, but he turns back to face me, cutting me off before I can start.

"Luke, right?" he asks. I nod, dumbfounded. "I'm Ashton. I'll try and quiet down over here," he says, tilting his head like you do when you're mentioning a sensitive subject and don't want to offend. "And tell your girlfriend I'm sorry, too."

It's hard to distinguish the look in his eyes from across the porch, but it looks like the one he gave me when he asked if I'd ever been in the Opera House: guard-down, seemingly genuine. For some reason it kind of rattles me.

"Alright," I say, erring on the side of caution. I'm not quite sure I trust him, still. "Thanks."

He nods, shooting me a small smile as if to prove himself a friend and not a foe. I smile back, but still with a hint of caution and then turn to head back home. I'm sure he won't turn the music down, but at least he acknowledged that that's what I came here for.

Once I reach the bottom of the steps, and my bare feet sink into the cold sand, he calls after me.

"And Luke?" he asks. I stop in my tracks and look back at him. "It was nice talking to you."

I just nod simply, and then continue on my way. I don't hear him go back inside until I'm nearly out of sight.

 


	2. you put me on a shelf

It's 8am when I'm awoken again.

The guy, Ashton, kept his promise, to my surprise. I went back to the house making peace with my assumption that he was probably just offering to turn it down to be nice, that he probably wouldn't actually turn it down, just let the placebo get me so I'd leave him alone. But as I climbed back in bed, the walls stopped rattling, and suddenly I couldn't hear the music anymore. Amiah had already fallen back asleep by the time I got back. I was gone for nearly twenty minutes. She must have given up, assumed the neighbors axe-murdered me for confronting them and decided to move on. I can't say I blame her.

The doorbell I didn't know we had rings throughout the house, piercing through the veil of slumber and stirring me awake. I groan, rolling over to nudge Amiah in hopes that she might get the door, but I find the bed next to me empty. Dammit. Oh, God dammit.

I pull myself out of bed, not bothering to put any real clothes on. We don't know anyone here that would be ringing our doorbell at 8 o'clock in the morning, and there's no way Amiah could have locked herself out, which means it's probably just some asshole with the wrong address. Hopefully my nakedness will scare him away before I have to say a word.

Unfortunately, however, as I should have assumed, the universe is too evil for coincidence, and when I open the door, I'm left standing in nothing but a pair of boxer briefs in front of the devil himself.

His leopard-print coat is gone, replaced by a white, short-sleeved button up left unbuttoned and floral swim trunks. His Gucci loafers are gone, and he is instead barefoot, as if mocking how I showed up to his house last night. Most notably different about his appearance, however, is not the lack of designer or animal print, but rather the girl standing next to him.

She has blonde hair almost as short as his, held out of her face by a pair of sunglasses pushing the locks back. She's fairly small compared to him, a dusting of freckles beneath her eyes giving her a very youthful appearance. She looks a bit like him, actually; not necessarily in physical attributes but in the hopelessly excited look on her face. He can look intimidating if he wants to, but at the moment, he's staring at me with the widest, most inviting smile I'd ever seen. Only, it's not that inviting, because I can see a hint of mischief in his eyes, ulterior motives lurking beneath the surface. I mean, I don't think the guy's going to axe-murder me, like I said, but it's enough for me to not entirely trust him.

They continue to stare at me. Once again, he's left me at a complete loss for words.

"Hi."

"Good morning, Sunshine," he says without missing a beat. "We brought croissants and apricot juice."

That's when I notice the pink pastry box in her hands, the lack of clear film on the top obscuring the contents. I take it from her hands when I realize she's offering it to me. He's holding a paper bag in his left hand which, if he hadn't just told me it was apricot juice, from what I know about the guy, I probably would've assumed it was liquor. He seems like a hair-of-the-dog kind of guy. Maybe that's how they're able to drink all night and not be hungover at 8 o'clock in the morning.

I look between he and the girl, letting my eyes ask the question I'm too dumbfounded to ask. 

"This is my girlfriend, Emma," he says, motioning to her. She waves, and I wave back, but it's probably fairly awkward on my part, being mostly-naked and very blatantly disoriented at the entire situation. He didn't strike me as the commitment type. Huh.

I notice, as Ashton rakes his eyes up and down my body, that they're waiting to be invited in, so I step to the side. His girlfriend enters first, his hand finding the small of her back as if to guide her inside, though he doesn't take his eyes off of me, that unnerving hint of a smirk playing at his lips. He has this way of looking at you like he knows all of your secrets and can barely keep himself from blurting them all out.

His girlfriend finds the glasses pretty quickly, grabbing four out of the cupboard and setting them on the island counter. Ashton hands her the bottle of juice, which she takes gracefully, and pours four glasses. It's a bit strange, but for some reason it doesn't feel as invasive as maybe it should. She's obviously not rude. If anything, it comes off as simply a bit motherly, taking charge of a situation that's otherwise destined to fall flat and become even more awkward than it already is.

Ashton doesn't come as far into the house, stopping about halfway between his girlfriend and me. He stops to take in the place, admiring a few photos of the ocean mounted about the fireplace in the living room. I remember him saying he stayed here a few times as a kid. I wonder if it looks the same as it did ten, fifteen years ago, or if the modern interior is thanks to a relatively new remodel. By the way he takes in everything with a certain degree of curiosity, I would think it's likely different. At least, for my sake, I hope so.

"So, Luke," he starts, pulling his eyes from the pictures and looking back at me. He shoves his hands in his pockets, brushing his shirt out of the way and exposing his torso. It makes me feel less insecure about my own lack of clothing, at least; or maybe more insecure, because he's tan and muscular and has hair on his chest, and I'm a bit on the skinny side, nearly hairless, and as pale as one of those porcelain dolls. But I try not to stare, because he's been decent enough to pretend not to notice me. "Where's this girlfriend of yours?"

"Um," I start, giving the surrounding area a once-over as if expecting her to be hiding around the corner somewhere. "I actually haven't seen her. She likes to jog in the mornings, so she's probably out right now."

Ashton nods simply, like he's listening but doesn't necessarily care where she is. He walks over to the slider door that exits out onto the patio, looking out at the ocean on the horizon, and I follow instinctively. Through the glass, we watch as the sun hits the blue water and shatters, dancing across the waves like broken shards of a mirror. He looks a bit to the left, his gaze getting lost somewhere down the beach. His eyes flicker to me for just a moment, but it catches me off guard. I look down at myself reflexively, almost wondering what it is he's looking at. It's then I notice that, as I stand here, the sun casts golden rays in through the glass that seem to give my pale skin a sort of luminescent glow. Maybe they're not pretending not to look at me, but instead are too afraid of being blinded by the light bouncing off of me to really look. 

"How long have you been together?" his girlfriend pipes up all of a sudden. 

Ashton isn't looking at me anymore, but I'm looking at him, like staring at him will help me understand what he's thinking, why he's looked at me like that twice now and his girlfriend hasn't looked once. He has a bit of stubble on his jaw I hadn't noticed last night. I guess he could pull off 27.

"Four years," I reply, not looking back at her, but for whatever reason, it draws a response from Ashton, who turns to look at me, eyebrows raised. 

"Four years, huh?" he asks, almost as if he doesn't quite believe me. "All of Uni? You went all of Uni without sleeping with other people?"

"Ashton," his girlfriend reprimands, but it's a bit disingenuous, like she's only saying it because she's supposed to, not because she isn't used to him saying things like that. Hell, I've known him for less than twenty-four hours and the response doesn't even surprise me.

I can't help the laugh that escapes me. "You know, somehow, I doubt I'm missing out."

The smirk which seems to have taken permanent residence on his face doesn't falter for even a moment. He seems to understand perfectly well what I'm insinuating about my girlfriend, though he doesn't say anything. Amiah would murder me in cold blood if she thought for even a second I was discussing what she was like in bed with strangers, but for some reason the moment just seemed to call for it, as if that's exactly what he was looking for.

The moment Amiah walks in the door, I turn towards her instinctively. It's all I can do not to drop to my knees and kiss the very ground she walks on, coming home at the perfect time to save me from what may possibly be the most tense moment of my entire life. Not only is she far better at conversation and diminishing awkward silences than me, but she's also a bit like my safety blanket, providing security in a foreign environment. God, I love her. She has always had that best timing.

She smiles as she sees me, but quickly comes to a stop, her expression turning to confusion as she takes in our visitors. But a few seconds later I see her look me up and down, her eyes nearly bulging out of her skull and she takes in my nakedness. I can tell the look she's giving me says to go put on clothes, Luke, you freak, but I don't move. I won't abandon her down here with these people. I won't.

"You must be Luke's girlfriend." I'm not surprised when Ashton is the first to break the silence, extending his hand to her. I think what I'm coming to learn about Ashton is that, not only does he do whatever he pleases, but he's just fucking charming enough to get away with it. 

She accepts his hand, tearing her confused gaze from me and smiling up at Ashton, who towers over her, just as I must."Yeah," she says. It amazes me how kind she sounds even in moments like these. "Amiah. Amy, for short."

"Amiah," he repeats. "What a beautiful name." He glances over at me with that same mischievous smile, and I begin to wonder if that's the only facial expression he knows how to do.  "I'm Ashton, and this is my girlfriend, Emma. We're the assholes who woke you up last night."

She opens her mouth to protest as she always does, say something like, "oh, no, you're fine," even if everyone in the room knows she's lying, but Ashton simply laughs off his own joke. How does he do that? If anyone else were to laugh at their own joke, they'd be lame, definitely not funny, that's for sure. But when he does it, it just makes you feel like you should be laughing, too.

Emma offers her one of the glasses of apricot juice which she crosses the kitchen to gracefully accept. She takes a sip of the fruit juice, quick to tell Emma, this is amazing, where did you buy this, why have I never heard of apricot juice before? Which leads to a conversation about apricots, which leads to Ashton charming the hell out of my girlfriend with the etymology of apricot. Apparently it's Latin, meaning "precious" after it's soft, delicate flesh. His own girlfriend seems perfectly contented to listen to the story I'm sure she's heard before, not a hint of jealousy in her expression, which confuses me. Amy smiles at a guy and I'm all shades of insecure. I'm not sure why; I know she loves me. Maybe I just don't understand why me, when there are guys out there like this one who tell strangers their defining childhood moments, turn their music down without a single complaint. Who bring croissants and apricot juice in the morning to apologize. Who know the etymology of the word apricot.

As Amy settles in with our new friends, I take the opportunity to escape upstairs and get dressed. As I walk into the bedroom, the messy sheets on the bed beckon me, practically begging me to come lay back down. The sun shines in through the window facing the ocean in a way that illuminates the white bedding as if it's our own piece of Heaven, dropped from the clouds by God himself, and it takes a strength I didn't know I had to ignore it and turn to the chair in the corner of the room where my suitcase rests. 

I strip out of my underwear, standing stark naked in the sunlight as I sift through my clothes. My typically wardrobe of neutrals is, as Amy decided, not appropriate for this trip, so my options are limited to trunks, a couple of t-shirts, and a few dressier outfits she packed in case we decided to go out to dinner or something. Eventually I settle on my red trunks, pulling them on with a small sigh. I run my hands through my hair tiredly, and then turn to head back downstairs to rejoin our company.

He catches me off guard, though, when I see him standing in the doorway. He's leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, and for the first time, I see a glimmer of sense in the smirk on his face. How long was he standing there? How much of me did he see?

He continues to stare at me, not saying a word, and I'm so out of my fucking element, so on edge because this guy is unlike anyone I have ever met, that I don't look away either. His stare is so blatant, so intentional, not like he's searching for anything. Like a statement. I'm just not sure what it's supposed to mean.

Then, without a word, he stands back up straight, and heads down the hall. The only bathroom is upstairs. He must've seen me while he was on his way.

Even as he leaves my sight, I swear I can still feel his eyes on me, like large, muscular hands running up my sides and across my chest, and I'm left standing there, unsure of how to even move my legs, let alone how I'm supposed to go downstairs and pretend nothing happened.

 

 

I end up back downstairs before Ashton. He comes downstairs, acting as I am: like nothing happened. However, he continues to give me that look, that "I've seen you naked" look, and it more than unnerves me. Was it a power move? Was it curiosity? I mean, what the fuck was that? Was it some twisted way of asserting dominance? Flirting with my girlfriend in front of not only me, but his girlfriend, too, wasn't enough?

Amy is much less skeptical of these people, it seems, eventually taking Emma up on her offer to show her the area, leaving me and this guy I barely know, let alone trust, sitting in the kitchen in silence.

He sits on one of the stools at the island, sipping a second glass of apricot juice as he watches me watch him. I feel like I'm performing a social experiment, observing a human like a lab rat, trying to determine their motives, brain capacity, testing their reactions to various stimuli. As if trying to understand what exactly makes him tick. The answer so far is, nothing. Nothing unnerves this guy. If he did what he did to assert dominance, than it was completely unnecessary: he has this innate way of owning every room he walks into with a single look.

"Have you ever been sailing?" he asks, suddenly. His tone is devoid of the mischief I anticipated, instead sounding completely stripped and innocent, like he sees no error in his ways. 

I shake my head.

"We should go." He takes another sip of the thick fruit juice. "I have a boat. One we could use, at least." 

I snort, shaking my head again. "You'll catch me dead before I willingly get out on the open water. Absolutely not."

He sets down his glass, looking suddenly intrigued, as if I'd finally manage to throw him a curve-ball. "Really?" he asks, quirking his head curiously. "You're afraid of the ocean?"

"Not the ocean itself," I'm quick to correct. "Just, you know, the prospect of being attacked by a megaladon or a cracken or getting caught in a storm and dying."

It's not necessarily true, but it's not a blatant lie, either. I've always had a problem with the open water; the beach I like just fine. Nothing makes you feel more at peace, or more truly in tune with the world, than sinking into the hot sand, sun beating down on your naked back, the smell of saltwater hanging thick and heavy in the air, the waves crashing gently with the tide. A few steps into the water is fine—maybe I'll even wade up to my waist on a good day—but there's too much you can't see, too much left unknown, to go any farther.

"You can't avoid all your problems, you know," he says. There's the faintest hint of a smirk on his lips.

Well, of course I know that, I want to say, but to be honest I don’t have the nerve. I’ve spent my life existing in different dimensions in my head, jumping from one plane to the next just to avoid confronting things I don’t want to confront. I did it all through high school when my GPA dropped from a 4.0 to a 2.7, through college when my parents got divorced, and I’ll continue to do it all through my twenties, whether he thinks I should or not.

He gives me a long, murky stare that is ultimately as unreadable as all the other looks he gives me. I wish he would just say whatever he was thinking. Maybe I run from my problems, but at least I don’t get my kicks surrounding myself in this air of ambiguity, always leaving people unsure of whether they understand me or not. At least I don’t do everything with an ulterior motive like this guy seems to do. At least.

“How about a hike?”

God, no, anything but that. Why is he so hellbent on us being friends? I should’ve just let him blare his stupid music last night, because now he clearly feels obligated to rectify it by befriending us. Amy might be just naive enough to enjoy it, but what I wanted this summer was to fall into a cocoon of anonymity and spend the next three months napping in the sun and listening to the waves and eating fancy foods at oceanside restaurants I can’t pronounce the name of. Why did he have to ruin this for me? Make me talk to people and go out and actually do things?

“I’m not much of hiker.”

He breaks into a sort of grin, a bit like he’s fighting it but can’t halt it altogether. “Come on,” he says, standing up. “We’re going for a hike. I know a beautiful spot.”

 

 

“You could’ve told me you were talking about the Blue Mountains.”

As the base of the mountains come into view, he looks over at me for a moment, not afraid to take his eyes off the road the way Amy is. His grin is all shades of playful, but if I'm honest all I want to do right now is hit him with a solid right hook for backing me into this corner and forcing me out of my bubble. I could be laying in bed watching Kung Fu Panda 2 right now, but instead I’m sitting in a car with a guy who, not two hours ago, saw me ass-naked in my room. How did I get sucked into this? Am I really so bad at saying no?

“What would be the fun in that?”

None for him, I suppose, but it would have been nice to know.

“Well, the Blue Mountains are like an hour away, so it just would have been nice to know.”

“Have you been?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Of course it is!” he smiles, reaching over and giving my knee a slight squeeze, and he almost gets away with it, too; I almost don’t notice it, but I do, and I can’t pretend it doesn’t catch me completely off guard. The action is over as quickly as it happened, and then his hand is back on the steering wheel, and he’s completely oblivious to my reaction. He keeps smiling. “You haven’t lived until you’ve seen those views.”

I huff just to let him know that I’m grumpy and not looking forward to be forced to climb a literal mountain, and before noon, too. He just laughs at me and keeps driving, not turning back to address me again as he continues on his way. My gaze gets lost along the trees lining the side of the dirt drive until eventually he finds a spot to park, and we begin heading toward the base.

He doesn't tell me where we're going or how long it's going to take, instead choosing to walk ahead of me in silence. I follow behind reluctantly, and we've only been here for five minutes before I start wondering if he has any snacks in the black backpack he's carrying. God, I should've eaten a croissant, or at least had some juice, but from the minute he showed up at my door, my nerves got the best of me and I completely lost my appetite. I hope he doesn't plan on being here all day. And if he does, he better at least buy me lunch.

As we near the center where the trails all start, I realize—though I don't know why I hadn't thought of this—there are a ton of people here. Sure, I knew the Blue Mountains were a touristy place, and it's the beginning of summer, so of course everyone's on vacation, but what the hell? It's not even ten o'clock yet. Not only is he making me exercise, but with other people, too? God, the nerve of this guy!

Everyone here is wearing proper hiking gear: heavy-weight pants, moisture-wicking shirts, proper hiking boots, hats, backpacks, and then here I am, in swim trunks, a white t-shirt, my old gray Chucks, and my Vuarnets. I really have no idea what I'm doing; I must stick out like a sore fucking thumb. Why didn't he say anything? Is it so hard to look at me and say, hey, Luke, you bumbling fucking idiot, are you really going to climb a mountain in Chucks? Even this guy, who was wearing Gucci loafers last night, has proper hiking shoes. 

Well, my spirit's been crushed before we've even started. He practically senses it, turning around just as the thought crosses my mind. 

"Are you alright?" he asks, furrowing his eyebrows.

"Yeah, I'm good," I lie. He seems to sense it, but misplaces his attempt to comfort me.

"I know you're probably tired, mate, but once we get where we're going you'll understand why I've dragged you here." He smiles reassuringly at me, and for some odd reason, it kind of works.

I sigh, resubmitting to the previous silence and continuing to follow him up the path. He doesn't say anything else. For some reason I feel suddenly compelled to fill the silence, unlike this morning, when I was happy to stand there awkwardly as he attempted to jumpstart a conversation.

"How long have you and your girlfriend been together?"

He turns back to look at me, some odd blend of playfulness and disappointment smeared across his face, as if he sees right through my efforts. What? It's not like I'm trying to distract myself from the same thought that's been in my head all morning about why he was standing in my doorway like that, arms crossed over his chest and staring at me like he was trying to assert himself or something. It's not like I'm asking stupid get-to-know-you questions so I don't have to keep wondering what point he was trying to prove with that. Definitely not.

"A while," he replies anyway, facing away from me. 

"'A while'? What's that supposed to mean?"

Once in the center, at the base of all the main trails, Ashton continues right onto a small trail shaded by a canopy of trees, not even stopping to check the signs and make sure he's headed in the right direction. I wonder how many times he's been here, how many times he's hiked this trail. I'll just add it to my list of questions, though my hopes are anything but high in terms of receiving any satisfactory answers from him. 

"As in, a while, Luke," he says with a hint of exasperation.

What, so he's gonna get snippy with me? 

I scoff loudly so he knows I'm pissed off now, deciding that following him in silence is definitely better than trying to make conversation with him. I mean, he can show up at my house at ungodly hours of the morning, wake me and my girlfriend, force me to climb a fucking mountain with him, but I'm not allowed to ask a fucking question? God. I was wrong. He really is an asshole.

We walk in silence for a few minutes before he speaks up again.

"Are you going to walk behind me the whole time?"

He turns to glance back at me over his shoulder, honey curls falling over his eyes. I shove my hands in my pockets and stare straight ahead. 

We continue on in silence, and I follow behind him despite his conveyed annoyance at that. I follow him toward the beginning of a steep trail, quickly realizing that nobody else is going this way. God, what if he only dragged me here to finally ax-murder me in the woods for crossing him last night? That'd really put a damper on the vacation.

Every minute or so he glances over his shoulder at me, as if to check that I'm still there. And every minute or so I roll my eyes at him and stare off elsewhere.

He sighs. "Why do you care?"

I want to continue being petty, but I don't know what he's talking about. "What?"

"How long we've been together," he explains. "Why do you care?"

"Oh." He takes a big step up onto a rock protruding from the center of the narrow trail, and offers me his hand as I attempt to follow behind him. "Well, I don't, really."

I accept his hand, forgetting my anger for a short moment. I brace my leg on the side of the rock, trying to use my own strength so I don't pull him down, but to my surprise he pulls me up effortlessly.

I don't know why, but it makes me laugh, and when he sees me laughing, he falls into stitches, too.

"What are you laughing at?" 

"You!" he says, still laughing. "What are you laughing at?"

"You!" I reply, and it only makes me laugh harder. "You just...nothing. Nothing."

My laughter dies down as I realize he's still holding my hand, and when he notices it, too, he lets me go. He waits there for a moment, just looking and looking at me, as if waiting for me to collect myself so we can move on, not a hint of confusion in his features. For some reason that throws me off. I begin to walk ahead so he knows I'm ready. Anything to escape that all-knowing stare.

He jogs ahead to catch up with me, and this time, I let him walk at my side.

He doesn't tell me how long they've been together, and I don't ask again. He thinks I don't care, which is why he doesn't tell me. I mean, I don't care, not really, but I know that, even if he had some weird reason for not wanting to tell me, he would, if I really asked him, so it digs at me like an itch I can't scratch. I can't help my waning curiosity.

Every quarter mile there's a sign nailed to a tree informing us of our distance, and we continue in silence until a mile-and-a-half. It's a shockingly comfortable silence, as if a natural state we just happened upon; he's stuck in his head, and I'm stuck in mine. I can't help but wonder what he's thinking about, to a point that it's all that fills my own head. Is he thinking of his girlfriend? Or a recent architectural project? Is he playing a movie or a song in his head to fight the boredom that's secretly consuming him? Is he thinking of me, in all my glory, or whatever you'd like to call it, as he found me this morning?

The realization strikes me like stepping on a thumbtack that he's probably thinking the same thing as me: wondering what it is I'm thinking about that's keeping me so quiet.

"Can I ask you a question?"

Despite trying to walk beside me, he's better at this whole outdoorsy thing than I am, so I let him stay a bit in the lead. He glances back at me while continuing on ahead, but only for a moment before his gaze returns forward.

"Yeah, sure, Luke."

I'm still not used to him saying my name, which, mixed with his obvious annoyance at the last question I asked, makes me second-guess my decision to ask in the first place. As I try to muster up the courage, I wallow in the audible silence of birds cawing in the distance, water dripping from the trees, the crunching of sticks underfoot, stalling until I figure out a way to deflect the situation and pretend I never had a question to begin with.

But, then, I have this moment of clarity, or something like that, where I remember that I don't care if this guy likes me or not, so why shouldn't I ask?

"Why did you come this morning?"

I wait for something like a relieved sigh or for his shoulders to relax, but he's not holding his breath and his shoulders aren't tense. What if I had asked him why he was watching me in the doorway this morning? Does he have an answer prepared just in case? Does he want me to ask? Did he actually see nothing and I'm totally overthinking the whole thing, so it doesn't matter if I ask, because he's done nothing wrong?

"Do you want the detached, keep-you-at-arms-length, bro kind of answer, or the real one?"

To be honest, I'm not sure. I guess if I really don't want to be friends with this guy then I should ask for the detached answer, but after all the bullshit this morning, all I want from this guy is the truth about his motives.

"The real one," I say, and then, a moment later, add, "I guess."

He stops in the trail to pick up a piece of branch, stepping on it and then jerking it upward with his hand to break off a piece. He continues ahead, using this as a walking stick, though he doesn't brace himself on it, meaning it's more for novelty than anything else. 

"You listened," he says simply.

He doesn't explain it. He doesn't look at me or give any indication that it's a meaningful statement at all. He just keeps walking, watching the ground ahead, and as I wait for his dramatic pause to end, I realize he's actually not going to explain it.

"What do you mean?"

"Last night," he says. He's still not looking at me. It's unlike him to avoid eye contact. "You showed up at my house to yell at me and ended up letting me pour my drunken feelings out to you on the porch. And I thought, well, therapists are really expensive these days, so I might as well take advantage.”

He looks back at me over his shoulder and shoots me a sarcastic look. I don't know how to respond to what he just said, so I choose only to acknowledge the easy part, which is the bad joke, so I mock-laugh at him, and he mock-laughs back at me, and then we continue on up the trail in that same comfortable silence. He smiles smally to himself as we continue toward our undisclosed destination. It infects me like smallpox, or Hep C, or something just as undesirable, and I can't help but smile, too. He makes it so hard to hate him. It's infuriating, truly.

As I follow behind him, I'm blown away by how effortless this all is to him, how even in the muddier spots he doesn't slip or falter at all; the walking stick bears none of his weight as he hops across large puddles, scales protruding rocks, and all but glides down small slopes on his feet. I, on the other hand, can only thank God that he's not looking back at me, and therefore can't see how I'm barely managing to stay upright. I still can't believe he let me come out here in Chucks. Fucking Chucks. Hey, Luke, you know what's a key element in climbing mountains? High tops. God. What a sick joke. I bet if I took my shoe off right now I could pour at least a pint of blood from the heel.

As we continue on our way, I begin to hear the faintest sound of rushing water, and as I follow behind him, we eventually come to a small clearing in the trees.

He turns and glances at me over his shoulder, again, smiling slightly to himself. I don't ask why. He's been doing that a lot today.

As we reach the top of the last small incline of the hike, a small body of water comes into view, and there are about twenty other hikers scattered around the area. I can't seem to find the source of the noise until we reach the very top, and I realize that the hikers are looking out at the same thing: we're at the top of a large waterfall that is pouring rampantly over the side of a cliff, who knows how far to the bottom. I can't see much from where we're standing, which Ashton seems to notice, as he beckons for me to follow him. He's smiling wickedly again, like he always does, but this might be the first time it doesn't completely unsettle me.

At the edge, there's a small wire fence, as if to say, hey, don't step off the fucking cliff, dumbass, but it wouldn't do much to stop you if you really wanted to jump, or if you tripped, or something like that. As we approach the fence, I realize, you can see everything. All you can see for miles are these valleys of green until the trees eventually melt into the warm horizon. I'm so used to the sun setting in the mountains that it bewilders me how, if we came here at sundown, I'd feel higher than the sun. Even if space is relative and all that.

"Wow."

The truth is, I'm consumed by such an overwhelming feeling that I simply can't articulate it. This is the biggest I have ever felt. I didn't know it was possible to feel so big. It doesn't make any sense, but it does, to me, to feel like everything, even the trees, are just dots in comparison. It's so much all at once that I feel suddenly overcome with emotion, so out of fear I might start crying, I tear my eyes from the view, turning to look at him instead.

He's already looking at me, of course. He's constantly a step ahead of me that way. He's smiling so wide, lips pressed together and dimples protruding, like he's trying to suppress it but he just can't. The look in his eyes is, as always, convoluted, but in a strange way, I understand it, so I smile back as I try to contain my emotions. In this moment, I feel so oddly at peace that I swear I've never known something so intimate in my entire life.

"Thank you," I tell him, but there's no way to verbalize my gratitude that he dragged me out here. "Thank you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long to the few of you that said you were looking forward to more! I got stuck with some hardcore writer's block and had the hardest time finishing it, so I'm sorry if the last half blows. from here on out it'll be better, I promise!


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